WMT follows ESOP trail:)ierievperlicfiegnhctes
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• West Midlands Travel has submitted an employee buy-out plan to Transport Minister Michael Portillo in a bid to avoid being split up by the Government.
The company employs 6,000 and runs more than 1,700 vehicles from 14 depots. It is valued at up to £80 million with an annual turnover of .2125m.
Details of the Employee Share Ownership Plan have not yet been finalised; it is likely WMT will use a similar arrangement to ESOP companies Yorkshire Rider and Busways, where a management team bought 51% of shares with their own capital and the remainder were bought for employees via an employee trust which borrowed from financial institutions.
The West Midlands PTA approved the sale last week and made a formal submission on the sale to Portillo last Wednesday. Last December he agreed to consider such a sale as a means of keeping the company as a single unit.
The PTA and the unions involved have accepted the ESOP as the only way forward for WMT in the face of the Government's determination to break the company up. The unions want to see a 100% buyout, open to all staff with an initial share allocation based on length of service. Councillor Phil Bateman, PTA chairman and non-executive director of WMT, admits the PTA has taken the decision as "a damage limitation exercise under duress from the Government".
Bateman is not confident that the ESOP will improve service to the public: "We already have a good efficient service built up over the years. Deregulation has not been a success and an ESOP is the best way to still offer the widest network of services possible." He says there is "some trepidation" in the company "over attack from predatory operators", which include Potteries Motor Traction of Stoke-on-Trent, Smiths of Shennington and Flights Coaches Travel of Birmingham.
WMT operates nearly 90% of the area's bus services, carrying more than 1.25 million passengers every day.
0 West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive and West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority have adopted a new logo to clear up confusion over who actually runs public transport in the region. The multicoloured, linked rings 'Centro' symbol will provide a focal point for enquiries. • West Midland bus driver Ron Payne is fighting to reg his PSV licence, which was ( dared null and void by the D on a technicality.
Payne, of A-Line Coaches Coventry, claims that the Ei. failed to inform him clearly o change in licence application rules and allowed him to tak4 PSV test within the 21-day notification period now requii between applying for a PSV cence and a driving test.
He took and passed the P! driving test, but was told thr weeks later that his result w null and void because he had not observed the 21-day rule Since passing his test he has driven a coach on the Coventry-London route for National Express, but the D' says it will not prosecute.
The PSV test was booked the same time as Payne appl for his licence; he was given test date one week later. He then received a letter from t DTp giving him another later test date and informing him I should not take a test until tl date. When A-Line director Brian Hayward enquired witl. the Traffic Area Office, he he was merely asked if Payn had taken a PSV test before.